The Viet Cong and the popularity of land reform

VIETNAM Orrin DeForest SR # Tape 5, sides 1, 2
CJ

DeForest:

During the years of 1968-1975, during my aah tenure in Vietnam, I had processed
and interrogated approximately four thousand, that is personnel...Tell
you about that later...During the time that I was...During the time that
I was in Vietnam in Bien Hoa,
1968-1975, I'd processed and
interrogated or debriefed approximately four thousand Viet Cong – ex-Viet Cong and ex-North Vietnamese regular
soldiers and during this we did this in such a complex manner as to
learn the entire structure of the Viet
Cong Communist party, commonly called the People's Revolutionary Party, in South
Vietnam, in Military Region 3.

We learned who they are, where they are, how they
followed their instructions and where their instructions came from and
aah we became experts. Our expertise became outstanding. This was a a
long and tedious project but aah from the personnel in my office
approximately 55 people working for me in Bien Hoa we learned about the Viet Cong – a little late, you
might say, in 1968, after the war had been on
for many years.

Interviewer:

Tell us now what the essentials of of uhm of their
motivation or what were they fighting for?

DeForest:

The Viet Cong,
as I learned – I was quite surprised to learn that they basically were
fighting for not a Communist philosophy, but for land reform. They
wanted land. They wanted a pad to grow some rice. They did not want
absentee landowners which they had. They were not in support of their
government – that is the Saigon government, no matter – whoever was the president.
They did not support that in any... generally speaking in any manner
because they are a village structure – they believe in their village –
they believe in their village secretary, and their village council, and
that is their home, that is their, aaah that's the only thing that
they're interested in, now the the Communist of course, took advantage
of this and aah caused many in many cases aaah the villagers and the
peasants to be alienated from the government. This was their tool
but...

Interviewer:

What other abuses were there that they felt strongly
about?

DeForest:

Generally speaking, aah you have to go back in history,
but also from what I saw, was the village, the government of Vietnam,
village secretaries, the _____ and militia, the regional forces, popular
forces, were of course over taxing the the peasants. They were taking
land from the peasants; soldiers were stealing the chickens and the
ducks, and that's a very valuable item. Aah, this was a common
occurrence throughout Military Region 3. And I can speak for aah a
twelve provinces that I was constantly in in in the neighboring Saigon area. This is aah
Military Region 3. I've talked to many people at all levels but
primarily the four thousand Viet
Cong. That's where I learned their motivation. And the Viet Cong morally...

Prevalence of corruption in the South

Interviewer:

Ok, go ahead... Start that again, the Viet Cong were...

DeForest:

The Viet Cong
cadre were, the political officers of course were Communist
indoctrinated and trained. They were in minority and in control. But the
Viet Cong aah I had I would
say a 100 personal friends of ex Viet
Cong and I would judge most of them to be morally and
ethically superior to the average citizen I met in the South Vietnam,
who were involved in corruption, in some manner in bars, in mili—in
civilian police were establishing checkpoints.

The checkpoints would shake down the people who would
travel from one area to the other, aah. There was the constant and
continuous corruption by the gov—the officials of the government of
Vietnam at all levels. There were a few, if you want to call them good
guys, there were a few honest men and I could name those and discuss
those but there's no need for that who did sincere fine jobs – and some
of the people in the army were sincerely good soldiers – but the
government of Vietnam, maybe because of aah a hundred years of or eighty
years of French colonialism had degenerated to the point where they're
just not good citizens. Aah, the four thousand Viet Cong...

Interviewer:

Stop there.

Camera roll 763.

Interviewer:

...in terms of corruption and that impede the people
and came in their lives. Wait for me to give you the little
hand...

DeForest:

When one thinks of of corruption in in South Vietnam,
it's difficult to to visualize what happens to the average citizen in
Vietnam but it happened to me on two occasions. Aah, I registered aah a
motor bike – legally tried to register a motor bike to get my local
license. And the government official accidentally because he knew he
would not do this to a foreigner but accidentally pulled out the drawer
where I was supposed to drop the money and I of course refused. Another
time I was stopped by a policeman and aah on the way to Saigon and aah we always
just simply had to pay them off. But this happened at all the
checkpoints.

When Vietnamese people would travel from one province
to the other to see relatives or do conduct business, or any legitimate
reason, on may occasions they'd be stopped by a national policeman and
the national policeman would say well I don't think your ID card is
legitimate. And aah this is the signal that the individual then had to
pay the policeman to travel. Now, little things like this – this is only
one example but others – if you wanted to register a birth certificate
in the family book in a hamlet you'd pay extra money than a normal tax
to register a document. Now Vietnamese people will even today probably
deny many of this kinds of things that occurred in Vietnam but this was
so wide spread. I'd like to cite another example.

A soldier about to be drafted – if he had three
hundred thousand piestras he could buy himself a draft exempt medically
disformed arm or wrist or finger and hand. This was done thousands of
times in Vietnam and I don't have first hand information of specific
cases but I do know several instances where employees of mine took
advantage of this. One man gave up his entire salary in the regional
forces to his commander in order to work in my office, as a draft
evader. And this was the kind of thing that happened. It was common, the
Vietnamese know it, the Americans knew it and the Americans condoned it
and said whereas the effect, well, we can't stop it. But no one really
gave it the effort to stop. The aah corruption administratively affected
every South Vietnamese citizen, whether he be Viet Cong or government of Vietnam's
citizen.

Interviewer:

How did the the VC exploit that?

DeForest:

Well, when the Viet
Cong would recruit, and we had excellent information about
recruiting, from peasants and guerrillas, when they recruited at their
highest levels, like in 1964, 1965
and through... they would obviously use this as corruption in government
as a recruitment pitch to a guerrilla – a young man living in a hamlet.
That young man in the hamlet aah he would listen to GVN, Government of
Vietnam officials, he would register for the draft or he would go to the
Viet Cong. The Viet Cong would legitimately and
honestly have a more reason to recruit and convince that young man to
serve against the Government of Vietnam.

Communist ideology had nothing to do with it. There
were very few Viet Cong
recruited because they were Communist, and we learned this a little bit
late, maybe, but the Communist were in control, The peasants of Vietnam
supported the Communist and in huge numbers, in thousands and in
hundreds of thousands because, basically because of the corruption, the
impossibility for them to obtain a piece of land – a small plot where
they could have their family and raise the rice without paying absent
landowners. By the hundreds who controlled most of the land in Vietnam.

There were absentee landlords. These absentee
landlords aah were making plenty of money, pay the... the peasant would
pay the rent, much more than he could afford, and the situation across
the board, throughout South throughout Viet—South Vietnam, particularly
in Military Region 3, where I was... aah considered the northern part of
the Rice Bowl of South Vietnam, the peasant absolutely had no chance.
The absentee landlord, the government officials, the army officials,
were in control of the country. And this in essence is about the
situation the Viet Cong faced
at recruitment so in the earlier...

Rationale for supporting the South against the
Communists

Interviewer:

Why didn't we support aah the good guys?

DeForest:

Why didn't we support the good guys? It's not a
question of... in my mind of supporting the good guys, because they were
the Communist aggression in South Vietnam. That was true. We never
supported anything except the Government of Vietnam's military cliché if
you want to call it that, the former French trained corporals became
generals and presidents. Most of the officers probably 90% of the
officers or the national policemen...

Interviewer:

Hold that...

DeForest:

... or recruiting or things like that... See, this is
not going to come out very...

PAUSE. (Flip tape).

Interviewer:

...Why'd we ended up supporting them...

DeForest:

Yeah...

Interviewer:

Ok. Come on. Tell me about...

DeForest:

Now in asking the question, why did we end up
supporting these kinds of people in the Government of Vietnam, I may try
to relate it in this manner. I worked with the special police branch and
the national police at the colonel level at liaison at the colonel level
and I developed some friends in the Government of Vietnam Air Force, and
in the aah in the local government circles in the city of Bien Hoa where I resided. From
these people, and I want to say that I learned this this from Vietnamese
people about the corruption in the police and the special branch. Then I
learned factually on the job, the corruption in the special police.

They did not have the motivation to fight the Viet Cong, They were hustling
second jobs. They were involved in owning bars. They were involved in
seeking money from the United States government. They were involved in
selling United States military supplies from Bien Hoa Airbase. Hundreds were caught doing
that by Americans and this was reported continuously. So the corruption
as a whole aah and my liaison with some high ranking officers –
everything that I learned from these officers was supported by two
Vietnamese colonels who were very close friends of mine who kept
continuously asking me to help stop it.

They identified... I'll give you an example. I won't
name any names but the local colonel in charge of military security
service – MSS – as one of the most corrupt officials in Military Region
3, they identified the commanding general. In the drug traffic, the last
commanding general had been deeply involved in drub traf—drug traffic in
Military Region 4 before he came to Military Region 3. This kind of
thing made the average officer like myself, made us literally sick at
the stomach that we continued to condone and support and work with these
people with no attempts, very little attempts made to stop it.

Interviewer:

But why?

DeForest:

I got a call (sneeze)...The reasons why we did this,
has got... we must refer back in to in history back to our own
leadership from Washington,
DC. When they said to us in the field, "you must win the war at
all costs. You must work with the special police. You must work with
this government," even though we knew that was impossible, later we went
totally independent on our own to accomplish the things that we did and
we were very successful. It was impossible to do this with the
Government of Vietnam officials. Except on a very selective base. And
I'd like to identify one 'cus he's now dead, Colonel Tong, from the
Province of Hau
Nghia, the province chief, was an outstanding, honest province
chief.

On forty-four provinces in Vietnam, you only had one
or two. He was a good man. The Viet
Cong killed him – they assassinated him – we had agent
reports that they would do this, in 1972. And
we told him, generally speaking, about how this would happen, but he he
walked into an ambush anyway. Aah, his family now live in Fullerton,
California
and I see the the Madam Tong occasionally. Colonel Tong had a government
in his province literally corrupt non corrupt proof. Aah, no real
corruption on large scale aah in that province.

Aah, a another man in Bien Hoa, the city of Bien Hoa, who is still in Vietnam and I
should not identify him, was an honest man who told me so much about
policemen and what they were doing and the government and the commanding
general but he said can we do? What can I do? I said well, they can be
reported to your superiors and I believe him when he said he could not.
If he had done that he would have just simply lost his job. That was
also true when you talk about the why.

Why weren't Americans doing more? To this day I can't
honestly answer that question except that most Americans realize even
though we were totally dedicated to doing our job, most Americans
realized that if they raised too much of a problem in reporting against
the government of Vietnam they were not going to be in the country very
long. So you had to subtly and carefully work and try to accomplish
something against the corrupt officials. And I'd like to relate one
rather quick story because he's a very dear friend, and I'll just call
him Bob. He was a super boss supervisor, officer in command in Military
Region 3 of our offices. (Blows nose) During the last six or eight
months of his tour he was transferred to Saigon and he had liaison at a very
high level. He invited me to his house for dinner several times and one
of our conversations...

Camera roll 7... This is the end of the material to be
transcribed on this side of the cassette.